Bible Verses About Predestination

Or has the potter no right to make from a given lump of clay this pot for honorable use and that one for dishonorable?

Now what if God, even though he was quite willing to demonstrate his anger and make known his power, patiently put up with people who deserved punishment and were ripe for destruction?

What if he did this in order to make known the riches of his glory to those who are the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory —

that is, to us, whom he called not only from among the Jews but also from among the Gentiles?

As indeed he says in Hoshea, “Those who were not my people I will call my people; her who was not loved I will call loved;

and in the very place where they were told, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called sons of the living God!”

But Yesha‘yahu, referring to Isra’el, cries out, “Even if the number of people in Isra’el is as large as the number of grains of sand by the sea, only a remnant will be saved.

For Adonai will fulfill his word on the earth with certainty and without delay.”

Also, as Yesha‘yahu said earlier, “If Adonai-Tzva’ot had not left us a seed, we would have become like S’dom, we would have resembled ‘Amora.”

So, what are we to say? This: that Gentiles, even though they were not striving for righteousness, have obtained righteousness; but it is a righteousness grounded in trusting!

However, Isra’el, even though they kept pursuing a Torah that offers righteousness, did not reach what the Torah offers.

Why? Because they did not pursue righteousness as being grounded in trusting but as if it were grounded in doing legalistic works. They stumbled over the stone that makes people stumble.

As the Tanakh puts it, “Look, I am laying in Tziyon a stone that will make people stumble, a rock that will trip them up. But he who rests his trust on it will not be humiliated.”

It’s the same way in the present age: there is a remnant, chosen by grace.

What follows is that Isra’el has not attained the goal for which she is striving. The ones chosen have obtained it, but the rest have been made stonelike,

just as the Tanakh says, “God has given them a spirit of dullness — eyes that do not see and ears that do not hear, right down to the present day.”

Just look at yourselves, brothers — look at those whom God has called! Not many of you are wise by the world’s standards, not many wield power or boast noble birth.

But God chose what the world considers nonsense in order to shame the wise; God chose what the world considers weak in order to shame the strong;

and God chose what the world looks down on as common or regards as nothing in order to bring to nothing what the world considers important;

so that no one should boast before God.

On the contrary, we are communicating a secret wisdom from God which has been hidden until now but which, before history began, God had decreed would bring us glory.

But when God, who picked me out before I was born and called me by his grace, chose

In the Messiah he chose us in love before the creation of the universe to be holy and without defect in his presence.

He determined in advance that through Yeshua the Messiah we would be his sons — in keeping with his pleasure and purpose —

he has made known to us his secret plan, which by his own will he designed beforehand in connection with the Messiah